The National Voice · 2026 campaign
The Right to Be Asked
Every child in the UK already has the right to be heard in decisions about their life. Article 12 of the UNCRC says so. In SEND decision-making, that right is treated as an aspiration. We are asking for it to be treated as a requirement.
United Nations · Treaty Series · Vol. 1577
Convention on the Rights of the Child
Article
12
1.
States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
Ratified · United Kingdom · 16 Dec 1991
WHYWhy one specific ask
“Fix SEND” is not a campaign. It’s a wish.
Every organisation in this field has, at some point, asked for the system to be fixed. It hasn’t worked, because “fix SEND” is too broad for any minister to actually do on a Tuesday.
So we are not asking for everything. We are asking for one procedural change — small enough that a minister, a select committee, or a single local authority could adopt it, and precise enough that you could check whether they had.
ASKWhat we are actually asking for
Three changes. All checkable.
Ask the child first — and write down what they said
Before a plan is drafted, the child's own account is recorded in their own words. Not paraphrased by a professional. Not inferred from a form.
Make it a field the record cannot close without
The child's voice stops being a box to tick and skip. A decision record is not complete, and cannot be signed off, while that field is empty.
Show where the child's view changed the decision — or why it didn't
If a child is heard and then overruled, the reasons are written down and given back to the family. Being asked has to mean something.
HONESTWhat success looks like — honestly
We will not claim the law changed in year one. That would repeat the very over-promising this campaign exists to end. The honest first-year test is simpler: was the ask heard by the people who can act on it, and did the movement grow around it?
SIGNAdd your name
A campaign is only as loud as the families behind it.
When we say “we speak for many families” to a minister, we want it to be true — and countable. Signing takes thirty seconds. We’ll never sell your details.